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Tag Archives: Clarence Thomas

I vaguely remember the Anita Hill hearings. I do remember wondering at the time why Anita Hill would follow a man who was sexually harassing her from job to job. Why didn’t she just say good riddance and stay in the job she had instead of moving on to the next job working with him? If the harassment was real, I seriously doubt she would have followed him. At any rate, there are some interesting similarities between the attempted destruction of Clarence Thomas and the attempted destruction of Brett Kavanaugh.There is also some revising of comments made during the Anita Hill testimony being done.

Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist posted an article yesterday citing some of the revised history now being spouted.

The article at The Federalist notes:

“Not only didn’t I vote for Clarence Thomas, I believed her from the beginning. I was against Clarence Thomas, I did everything in my power to defeat Clarence Thomas and he won by the smallest margin anyone ever won going on the Supreme Court,” Biden told “The View’s” Joy Behar.

That is the current statement.

The article notes past statements:

But in 1998, Biden admitted to Specter (Senator Arlen Specter ) that “It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, [Hill] was lying” about a key part of her testimony. The exchange was published in Specter’s 2000 memoir, “Passion for Truth: From Finding JFK’s Single Bullet to Questioning Anita Hill to Impeaching Clinton.”

The issue is important, as the media and other partisans rewrite the historical record about Hill and her accusations. The widely watched hearings revealed inaccuracies in Hill’s various versions of events and ended with 58 percent of Americans believing Thomas and only 24 percent believing Hill. There was no gap between the sexes in the results. In the intervening years, activists have relentlessly attempted to change the narrative, writing fan fiction about Hill, bestowing honors on her, and asserting that her disputed allegations were credible.

The article also notes:

Finally he asked Hill about a USA Today article that claimed, “Anita Hill was told by Senate staffers her signed affidavit alleging sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas would be the instrument that ‘quietly and behind the scenes’ would force him to withdraw his name.”

Specter read from the article: “Keith Henderson, a 10-year friend of Hill and former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer, says Hill was advised by Senate staffers that her charge would be kept secret and her name kept from public scrutiny.” Later it said, “They would approach Judge Thomas with the information and he would withdraw and not turn this into a big story, Henderson says.”

Specter asked her if this was true, attempting to find out what Senate Democrats had arranged with Hill. Nine times she denied the claim, demurred, or otherwise attempted to get away from the question. She said she could vividly remember events related to Thomas from many years prior, but couldn’t quite remember this conversation from weeks prior.

Somehow this all seems too familiar. I am grateful for men who do not back down when faced with accusations that have no evidence and no collaboration. If women are serious about ending the sexual harassment of women, they also need to be serious about ending false accusations against men whose politics they may disagree with.

The media has written a lot about Joe Biden’s style in the past few days. Today the Associated Press posted an article stating that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated that Joe Biden needs to understand that people have personal space that needs to be respected. Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article noting that even after the dawn of the #MeToo movement, Democrats do not seem overly concerned about Joe Biden’s behavior. Remember, this is the party of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, etc. Joe Biden’s behavior seems tame. There are numerous pictures showing questionable behavior by Joe Biden, but he gets a pass. There was no actual evidence against Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh, but they were viciously attacked. The Lt. Governor of Virginia is still in office despite reports of sexual assault that were reported at the time of the incident. There seems to be a bit of a double standard here.

The American Thinker concludes:

My guess — and it is a pure guess, as I have no connections with the Dems’ inner circles — is that Joe Biden is going to see the wisdom of withdrawing from the race, especially since his son Hunter’s connections in Ukraine are at risk. He’s old and has been making scads of money giving lectures. He has a choice: retire and reap gratitude, honors, and many more lucrative speaking gigs, or else press forward with his candidacy and become an icon of perversion, with his son facing Trump treatment by the media, an old white male whose apologies for his privilege only further enrage the aggrieved.

I think Joe Biden is probably a very nice man, but I don’t want a man who has no respect for personal space as President. I realize that the media will pretty much leave him alone because he is a Democrat, but there would always be a controversy about his behavior swirling around him.

What is being done to Judge Kavanaugh is a borking. It’s an eleventh-hour attempt to make sure he never sits on the Supreme Court. It is based on a thirty-some-year-old charge that cannot be substantiated or disproved. On an interesting side note, a classmate at one point posted on Facebook that the incident happened and was the talk of the school for days. Unfortunately, the incident evidently happened in the summer when school was not in session. One thing everyone needs to consider is whether or not they want to live in a country where when you are up for a promotion a person can come out of the woodwork and deny you that promotion based on an unsubstantiated claim that you did something inappropriate in high school. The other thing to consider is patterns. Is there a pattern of abuse in Judge Kavanaugh’s life? Is the pattern there that was there with Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and some other public figures? If there is a pattern, this charge needs to be examined more closely. If not, it is time to move on and understand that the charge can be neither proven or disproven and therefore must be dismissed.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an editorial about the circus this nomination process has become.

The editorial states:

It didn’t have to be this way.

Feinstein didn’t have to leak the anonymous accusation to the press, contrary to Ford’s wishes. Or she could have urged Ford to go public early, giving both parties enough time to be heard.

Even now, Feinstein and her colleagues could back a committee hearing, without which Kavan­augh has no realistic opportunity for mounting a defense. Kavan­augh is a judge and a political operator. But he ‘s also a father and husband.

But no. Senate Dems have settled on the ugliest means available, even by the standards of the body that added the verb “Borking” to our political vocabulary. The question is: Why have Republican high-court nominations brought out the worst from the left, going back to the Ronald Reagan era?

The short answer is that liberals fear their major cultural victories of the past half-century are democratically illegitimate. Not a single one was won at the ballot box, going back to the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold decision, which recognized a constitutional right to contraceptives. From abortion to gay marriage, plus a host of less titillating issues, modern liberalism has lived by the Court. And liberals fear their cause will die by the Court.

Unless, that is, they block conservative encroachments into the judiciary by all means necessary. Hence, Borking and Clarence Thomas-ing. And hence, too, the naked slandering of Mitt Romney in the course of the 2012 presidential campaign, to forestall his shifting the Court to the right.

I wish I could say that the way out of this impasse is for the right to double down on the gentle conservatism represented by Romney, the Bush dynasty, and the late John McCain. Perhaps that is the right course in the long term. But for now, it is imperative for the health of American democracy to resist the liberal ruthlessness that is on display in the halls of the Senate.

The verb “to Kavanaugh” must not be permitted to enter our lexicon, lest the step to unfreedom become irrevocable.

This is where we are. The only way out is to confirm Judge Kavanaugh so that this does not happen again. The last-minute sex accusation did not work on Clarence Thomas and it should not work on Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe after two strike outs, the Democrats will stop using this technique.

The October Surprise is a political tactic that has been used in the past to convince the public that a candidate is unfit for office. It is done close enough to the election so that there is not adequate time to research the the accusation before the election. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. Somehow the accusation and the accusers disappear after the election. Rarely does the accused get a chance to redeem his reputation. In the past the tactic has been used in presidential campaigns and Congressional campaigns. A form of it has also been used to attempt to block Supreme Court nominees. It worked on Robert Bork; it failed on Clarence Thomas. I have no idea what is going to happen with Judge Kavanaugh.

There are a few things to consider in the attack on Judge Kavanaugh. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today that revealed the following:

It looks like Brett Kavanaugh’s mother, Judge Martha Kavanaugh, ruled against the parents of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accuses Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Court documents show the losing party in a foreclosure case Martha Kavanaugh heard to be Ralph and Paula Blasey of Potomac, Maryland. They appear to be Christine Blasey Ford’s parents.

The fact that Kavanaugh’s mother ruled against Ford’s parents doesn’t prove Ford is lying about the conduct of the son. Her allegation, coming so many years after the fact and without a description of when or where the event supposedly occurred, is probably not susceptible to being ruled out conclusively. But there now seems to be a motive, beyond partisan politics, for Ford to make up or significantly embellish her story so long after the “fact.”

In any event, the fact that Ford’s story, having been presented so late and with little detail as to time and place, is probably not susceptible to being ruled out means that, if not “ruled in” conclusively, the story should not preclude Kavanaugh’s confirmation. We have statutes of limitations for a reason.

Finally, unless we accept the view that Kavanaugh truly attempted to rape this girl, I don’t believe his conduct provides a basis for rejecting his nomination. Kavanaugh was still a teenager. More than five dozen women who knew him at the time vouch for his behavior. His female law clerks consider him a gentleman and a mentor.

The American Thinker posted an article today detailing some of Ms. Ford’s student reviews. It is very obvious that Ms. Ford easily fits into the category of a radical liberal. The question is whether or not she has any foundational principles that would prevent her from making false accusations.

The article at The American Thinker concludes:

So has Kavanaugh gotten on Ford’s bad side by expressing conservative ideas? Probably. And even if her allegations are true, I very much doubt she’d have come forward had Kavanaugh stayed on her good side by being a leftist reprobate in the mold of Slick Willie or Chappaquiddick Ted Kennedy. For a good example of such situational sexual mores, note that liberal reporter Nina Burleigh actually said in 1998 about B. Clinton, “I’d be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

As for Kavanaugh, unless it’s shown that he’s like Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy and has exhibited a pattern of sexual wrongdoing, there’s nothing to see here. Ford claims that the 36-year-old alleged incident of sexual misconduct took place in a room with only her and the two boys present. So while 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in high school have come forward to vouch for his character as a gentleman, Ford’s lone word is the only claim against him. Heck, there are more testimonials as to Ford’s alleged insanity than there are regarding Kavanaugh’s alleged impropriety.

This is foul play on the part of the anti-Trump crowd. The fact that Jeff Flake is using these accusations as an excuse not to vote Judge Kavanaugh out of committee and let the Senate vote is an indication of where things are. The fact that the Democrats are using this tactic to attempt to stall the nomination also illustrates their pettiness in trying to prevent the President from exercising his Constitutional right to select judges. The actions of Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats involved in this smear campaign are a disgrace to their party and to their country. These are the people who supported Bill Clinton as President when there was current evidence against him. Now they have discovered morality and can’t support a man with a questionable accusation from thirty years ago. That really does not pass the smell test.

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial today about some of the reactions to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justice. Some of the attacks on this man by the political left are so ridiculous they are funny.

A big chunk of change, to be sure. But…what? It’s a bit hard to argue Kavanaugh wasn’t gainfully employed. The Post further makes a big deal that Kavanaugh’s most recent financial form shows less than $70,000 in assets. Sound poor? Does that disqualify him from service on the Supreme Court? Do we now have an asset test for all Court nominees?

What’s absurd about the “assets” is they don’t include his six-figure income and generous pension from being a federal judge. Nor does it include the value of his home. We don’t know what those are, but we’re pretty sure the net value of both is well north of $1 million.

It gets worse:

The Post also “reported,” if that’s the word, that Kavanaugh proclaimed himself Treasurer of the “Keg City Club — 100 Kegs or Bust” in his high school yearbook, and referred to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Rehoboth Police Fan Club.”

So, teenage hijinks are now a solid disqualification for service on the federal bench?

Of course, this is all recycled pap from Kavanaugh’s approval process to be a federal judge. It’s mostly all known. Why repeat it? Anything to sully a man’s reputation. After all, recall how both Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas were smeared by the left during their confirmation battles. Together, they were two of the most disgusting and unfair spectacles in American political history.

I that is all the dirt they can find on this man, he totally deserves to be confirmed in the next two months!

All that is happening today is that the Senate is being returned to the rules that lasted for 100 years prior to 2003.

The judicial filibuster was invented by the Democrats in 2003. The point is there was no filibuster anywhere… It’s not even mentioned in the Constitution. It’s a Senate rule. The Senate can make whatever rules it wants. The Democrats… I just listened to Dick Durbin. (paraphrased) They’re talking about decades and centuries of Senate tradition being wiped aside by these evil Republicans! The Republicans didn’t do anything but stand aside while the Democrats changed the rules. So all that’s happening is that Democrat rules that created filibustering judicial nominees are now being removed.

That’s all that’s happening. The Senate is being returned to normal. That’s all that’s happening. There is no great earthquake happening here. The Senate is not being forever undermined and changed. But that’s the media’s story, and so the Democrats are going along with it. The media’s devising all this strategy, and they’re showing by virtue of controlling the news how the Democrats should act and what the Democrats should say.

…The Senate has just affirmed the nuclear option on the Gorsuch confirmation. To prove the point that prior to 2003 judicial filibusters didn’t exist, look at Clarence Thomas! Clarence Thomas — after all of that crap that was his confirmation hearings — was confirmed to the court with fewer than 60 votes. So was Samuel Alito, and there have been others.

But in the modern era, those are two prominent justices confirmed with fewer than 60 votes. The filibuster didn’t exist. The Democrats invented the judicial filibuster in 2003 to stop the nominees to lower courts of George W. Bush. Harry Reid pulled it again in 2013 to include all presidential judicial nominations except those nominated for the Supreme Court. What McConnell has done today is not alter the Constitution.

McConnell and the Republicans have not nuclearized the Constitution. They have not actually triggered a nuclear option. That’s just words. All that’s happened here is that Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate its rules that existed prior to the Democrats changing them in 2003. And, by the way, the Senate can make whatever rules it wants. And if a majority votes on the rules change, then it’s changed. The Constitution does not say anything about filibusters, because the filibuster was not actually invented until long after the country was founded and began operating.

So what is this actually about? This whole exercise was nothing more than a political game of chicken. I am still not convinced that the Democrats thought the Republicans would use the nuclear option. There will be Senate and House seats up for grabs in 2018. The recent track record of the Democrats in Senate and House elections is abysmal. It is hoped that all this fuss about the nuclear option (and forcing the Republicans to use it) will energize the Democratic voter base. It has nothing to do with the qualifications of Judge Gorsuch (and it doesn’t even have anything to do with Judge Merrick Garland). Judge Garland is a good excuse for the Democrats to throw the temper tantrum they are currently throwing. It’s all about the next election. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Last month the new Smithsonian Museum celebrating black history opened. Unfortunately, the political slant involved in the museum does not give an accurate picture of black history nor does it provide a picture that promotes any sort of healing of race relations in America.

“I am not surprised that Justice Thomas’ inspiring life story is not a part of the new museum,” Mark Paoletta, an assistant White House Counsel in the George H. W. Bush administration who worked on the Thomas confirmation, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Civil rights leaders have tried for decades to malign Justice Thomas because he actually dares to have his own views on race issues. One prominent liberal Supreme Court practitioner has called Justice Thomas ‘our greatest Justice,’ but you would never know that listening to the civil rights leadership.”

The exclusion is especially odd given Thomas’ intimate experience with racial discrimination.

Thomas was born in Georgia’s coastal lowlands among impoverished Gullah-speakers. By his own account, he did not master the Queen’s English until his early 20s. He came of age in Jim Crow Savannah, where he was in turn ridiculed by white neighbors and classmates for his unpolished style, one of many indignities typical of his adolescence in the racist south. The startling racial injustices of his youth, by discipline and sheer force of will, gave way to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. and Yale Law School.

It is a shame that young visitors to the museum will not be able to read his inspiring story. It is also a shame that a women who had no evidence for her charges against Justice Thomas and who followed him from job to job a number of times ( why would she do that if she were being sexually harassed?) is given a place of prominence. As I have said before, “I thought only communist countries rewrote history.”

CNS News posted an article today about the Barron’s AP European History study guide. I have previously written articles about the changes made to AP American History, but this time the textbook writers (and the guide writers) have outdone themselves.

In explaining the difference between the political left and the political right, the guide instructs:

Things get interesting when Messrs. Roberts and Eder show the far right as “reactionary / fascist,” which they define simply as “those who want things like they used to be.” Never mind the bit about fascism having something to do with dictatorial rule, absolute power over individual freedom and prohibition of dissent. If you “want things to be like they used to be” – say, because you don’t want unelected judges imposing their views by fiat or because you think market-based solutions tend to work better than top-down central economic planning – you are a fascist.

Justice Thomas, the second black justice of the United States Supreme Court, wrote passionately in his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” of growing up during segregation and overcoming racial discrimination. Even liberals have recognized his compelling background. During Justice Thomas’s confirmation process, columnist William Raspberry quoted a friend as saying, “Given the choice between two conservatives, I’ll take the one who’s been called ‘nr.’”

I hope someone is teaching our students how to think. Our schools are simply indoctrinating them.

Justice Scalia said he believed the ruling paved the way for homosexual marriages. “This reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky, grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples,” he wrote.

He was right, and no one believed him.

I need to explain some of the reasons I oppose Gay Marriage. I don’t oppose Gay civil unions, and I don’t oppose gay people. I oppose Gay Marriage because it can easily infringe on the rights of people who believe what the Bible says about homosexuality. When Massachusetts legalized Gay Marriage, all the Catholic adoption agencies left the state because their right to run their agencies in accordance with their religious beliefs was taken away. What about their right to practice their religion? Would Bible-believing pastors be forced to perform gay weddings? Would their rights be violated? In my opinion, calling civil unions gay marriage opens up many more legal questions than it solves. I am willing to give gay partners the full rights of married people–I am just not willing to let them trample on the religious rights of others.

Heritage.org posted an article today about Obamacare and the recent decision by the 11th Circuit. On Monday the Department of Justice announced that it would not appeal the decision by the 11th Circuit, opening the way for Obamacare to go to the Supreme Court. However, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is appealing the portion of the panel’s decision that held that the unconstitutional individual mandate could be severed from the Obamacare legislation.

The Washington Examiner posted a story yesterday about the progress of the lawsuits regarding Obamacare.

The article at the Washington Examiner states:

Obamacare’s fate will almost certainly be decided by the Supreme Court in 2012, either in June or shortly after November’s election. And neither conservatives nor President Obama can be sure whether they want a decision before or after the election.

The question that comes to mind here is why the Obama Administration isn’t working to slow down Obamacare’s trip to the Supreme Court. The longer it takes the Supreme Court to hear Obamacare, the more of Obamacare will already have been put in place and it will be harder to undo. The decision in the 11th Circuit is not totally negative for the Obama Administration–severing the individual mandate works for the Obama Administration–if the rest of the law stands, then they are still ahead of the game. The individual mandate was the part of the law most likely to be declared unconstitutional.

I have a few other ideas. I believe as this case moves forward, there will be an attempt to force Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case at the Supreme Court. There is also the fact that Elena Kagan worked on the Obamacare legislation while she was at the White House and should recuse herself from the case (I doubt that she will do that voluntarily). Obamacare at the Supreme Court is not a slam-dunk for either side, and there is a risk that the case could go either way. The other aspect of this is that if Obamacare is found unconstitutional, the Obama campaign will attempt to use its defeat as a campaign issue. Because Obamacare is overwhelmingly unpopular, I am not sure how effective it will be as a campaign issue.

Today’s New York Post posted an article by Michael Barone about the attack piece on Clarence Thomas written by Jeffrey Toobin and publiished in the New Yorker Magazine. Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court since 1991, so why the sudden attack? Simple–Obamacare.

The interesting part of the article in the New Yorker Magazine is the fact that Jeffrey Toobin, while criticizing Justice Thomas, seems to have a lot of respect for him as a judge. The problem is simple–Justice Thomas believes in the Constitution as it was written. He makes his decisions based on the Constitution. There is no way that the idea of requiring American citizens to buy a product is in the Constitution.

The article in the New York Post concludes:

Congress has never before passed and the court has never upheld a law requiring individuals to buy a commercial product, as ObamaCare does. On this, the Obama Democrats, not Clarence Thomas or judges following his lead, are the ones sweeping aside precedent.

And that is why, as the date for the Supreme Court to begin its next session nears, the attacks on Clarence Thomas will continue and increase. If Justice Thomas cannot be forced to recuse himself from the case on Obamacare, there is a good chance that Obamacare will be overturned. If Obamacare is not overturned, the nightmare for American healthcare is only beginning.